Farmer Focus Livestock: Grass cover is improving for Tom Rawson
Writing this article two weeks before publication is always dangerous when discussing the weather.
In this case I hope the cold, grass-free start to spring is a distant memory and you laugh as you read this standing up to your knees in lush pasture eagerly awaiting the arrival of the silage contractor.
At Dewsbury, we have started the second round of grazing, turning in more respectable covers of about 2500kg/dm/ha; quality is between 12.5 and 12.9ME with proteins coming in just over 30%.
In Lincolnshire, the builders are running 12 days ahead of schedule; with the pit floor, walls and concrete panels in place and the interior walls in the dairy building half up. The next job is the collecting yard, which is 13m wide and 100ft long. Yes I am of the generation that falls between imperial and metric depending on who I am talking too. The builders, the company supplying the backing gate and the parlour fitters are all in metres, the rest of us involved all talk feet and inches. It’s a shame a 15ft gateway is not 5m, it would make my life easier.
My thoughts are with any former Arla Asda suppliers that have had their milk price downgraded. I heard a farmer on Farming Today explain how he had missed a meeting because he was on holiday, and the time his cow was calving. We can all give ourselves excuses for not attending meetings, the cows under our care do seem to have a bad habit of knowing when we are going out, but Asda has now put an hourly rate on going and listening to what it is saying!